Age of Reason/The Enlightenment 1650s to 1750s * Emphasis on logic, science and reason * Continued rise of industrialisation * No poems from this era |
Romanticism * 1750s to 1850 * Reaction against Industrial Revolution, science and rationalism. * Revolt against social and political hierarchies (French Revolution) * Rediscovery of the mythology, folk stories and occult * Prizing of emotion over reason * Artist is god-like * Rebellion and non-conformity * Finding beauty and inspiration in nature * Good and evil two sides of same coin – both embraced * Below, poems 3 and 5 are typically Romantic. 3 sees that God/artist creates both the tiger and the lamb. 5 finds comfort in nature. | | 3. The Tyger - William Blake | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | The artist, blacksmith, God create things both gentle (lamb) and violent (tiger) | Strong use of trochaic metre; 4-line stanzas; lines 1 and 2, 3 and 4 rhyme; quite regular syllables (7-8) | Rhetorical questions | The role of the artist and God; the origin of violence; embrace of the dark and the light side of life as one source | 4. Ozymandias of Egypt - Percy Bysshe Shelley | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | The speaker tells the story of a traveller who saw the a statue of Ozy, who ordered and built mighty works but those works have now disappeared into the desert | Petrarchan or Italian sonnet | Alliteration; irony of great works no longer visible | Change and time; power and powerlessness; arrogance | 5. Ode to Autumn - John Keats | content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | The abundance of autumn | An ode; three-stanza; variable rhyme scheme; stanzas are eleven lines long; iambic pentameter | Personification of autumn; sound devices; look out for long vowel sounds evoking gentle mellowness | Beauty and comfort of nature |
Victorian and Gothic PoemsVictorian * During reign of Queen Victoria 1837-1901 * Reaction against Romanticism? * Increase of industrialisation and urbanisation * Emphasis on nationalism, clear cut right and wrong * World is governed by God’s will * Moral absolutism: right is right and wrong is wrong; there are savages and civilised peopleGothic [a sub-category within Victorian period] * Mid-1800s * medieval or medieval-type setting * gloomy landscape and * woman in distress needing to be rescued * Evil, dominating, lustful * Supernatural events and omens and nightmares * Below, 7 and 8 are by poets going against the Victorian absolutism: about loss: loss of faith in 7 and loss of nature in 8. Both pessimistic and critical of Victorian ideas. * 6 is a Gothic poem. How do Gothic ideas fit in to Victorianism? | | 6. Remembrance - Emily Brontë | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | Remembering and almost enjoying the bitter sweet pain of a woman’s loss of her lover | An elegy. Gothic like poem; 4-line stanzas where lines 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 rhyhme | Personification and intense imagery | Loss; pain, pity and self-pity | 7. Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | Man rises and the withdraw of the tidal sea reminds him of the loss of religion; the rising tide of violence and war; but at least he has his love | Could be called a lyric poem, an elegy or a dramatic monologue | Look out for long vowel sounds; harsh sound images; enjambment | Loss of faith and meaning; rise of violence; but the enduring comfort of love | 8. Binsey Poplars - Gerard Manley Hopkins | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | Nature via trees is erased by felling and progress | NB! Look up sprung rhythm! | Sound device of assonance and alliteration through sprung rhythm | Loss of nature that cannot be reclaimed |
Modernism (and then Post-Modernism) * Emerged after WWI; many people questioned the slaughter and insanity of it all * Old truths questioned eg faith, authority * Rise of Humanism (focus on people, not God) * Slavery and imperialism questioned * There is no absolute moral meaning (eg God); you must find your own meaning and its relative * The old ways (eg realistic paintings and novels) questioned and experimented with * Below, poems 10, 11 and 13 are typically modernist in their pessimistic themes of war, loss, and decay. * Poem 12 is modernist in structure (free verse, experimental, not confined to conventional poetic structure) * Poem 9 goes against the grain | | 9. The Song of Wandering Aengus - William Butler Yeats | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | Like the myth, the speaker finds a love and then spends the rest of his life finding her; even to death | Iambic tetrameter; lyric poem | Allusion to myth; imagery of magic and romance | Pursuit of the ideal, obsession | 10. Will it be so again? - Cecil Day-Lewis | Content | Form/structure | Techniques | Themes | Will it recur that the young and the good and the brave die in wars while the ‘scheming’ profit; we must try as the ‘living’ to not let it be so again | 5 line-stanzas; series of questions | Rhetorical questions; metaphor of seeds and dead | War is pointless | Content | Form/structure | techniques | themes | 11. Refugee Blues - WH Auden | Refugees who are welcome nowhere; they are less welcome than animals; they could be Jews in Nazi times, or any refugees | 3-line stanzas (blues music has rhythm of 3); lines 1 and 2 always rhyme | Rhetorical questions; repetition | Demonisation and indifference to ‘the other’ | 12. Constantly Risking Absurdity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Comparing a poet to an acrobat; both must perform and risk failure and embarrassment | Free verse poem; note the poem’s layout, irreverent or like a high wire line | Extended metaphor of poet and acrobat; pun of ‘gravity’; some simile and assobance | Risk; creativity; failure | 13. Mirror - Sylvia Plath | Written from the mirror’s perspective (the mirror as our cold, truth-telling self?), the mirror objectively sees the age and decay of the woman. The mirror and the lake swallow youth and give back old age | Free verse poem in two stanzas | The personification of the mirror and of the lake | Change; aging; truth; loss of youth |
South African Poems during Apartheid * Common themes: intrusion of politics into poetry * Poem 14 can be seen as the emotional experience of a man sent to an apartheid jail | | 14. Touch - Hugh Lewin | When the prisoner is released there will be the irony of touch (abuse in prison) and touch he longs for, the human comfort | Free verse with lots of enjambment | irony | Loss of love; abuse; desire for comfort; imprisonment |
South African Post-Apartheid Poems * Return to less political, more personal and universal themes such as poverty and class difference (15), AIDS (16) and family inheritance and generational differences (17) | Content | Form/structure | techniques | themes | 15. Trespasser - Tatamkhulu Afrika | A man wanders under a bridge in the rain and sees a fearful image of a beggar family but then a moment of beauty and grace | Free verse poem | Imagery both ugly and beautiful | The surprise of grace amidst ugliness and poverty | 16. Crossing over - Chris Mann | Speaker meets two people with AIDS, in church, and wonders how they are doing as they cross over toward death | 4-line stanzas, 8-10 syllables per line; free verse | Some enjambment; a plain almost prose-like poem | How do you reach out to a person suffering; how can you understand their experience? | 17. I have my Father’s Voice - Chris van Wyk | A man looks back at his life and sees that his father was like him; the one difference is that the man has poetry unlike his father | Free verse | | |
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Romanticism, often thought of as a reaction to Neoclassicism and the Age of Enlightenment, was introduced in the 19th century. Unlike Neoclassicism or The Age of Enlightenment, which focused on harmony and reason, Romanticism opposed the rational thought and played on the emotions. Seen mostly in literature, visual art and music, this type of art often included dramatic scenes and subjects that were meant to invoke an emotional…
- 1000 Words
- 3 Pages
Powerful Essays -
·In contrast, W. T. Waugh found little evidence of a distinct period. Rather, he saw continual intellectual activity throughout medieval Europe. If there was a renaissance, it began in 1000, during the Middle Ages, not with the humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Medieval scholars read the Greek and Roman classics. Therefore the humanists have exaggerated their importance. The “renaissance” was no more than the high point of the Middle Ages.…
- 368 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
According to Mr. Young, “Romanticism was a nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that placed a premium on imagination, intuition, emotion, nature, and individuality.” These principles are reflected in many Romantic authors including Irving, Poe, Dickinson, and others. The compendium of poems with Romantic origins differ incredibly, but the dominant themes of imagination, intuition, nature, and individualism unify Romantic poetry.…
- 714 Words
- 3 Pages
Better Essays -
Some of the most important literary figures in Spain’s history came from this golden period, one of them being the famous Garcilaso de la Vega. His sonnet, Sonnet XXIII, perhaps one of the most significant sonnets of this epoch, focuses on the relationship of beauty and time. The message is successfully conveyed through the careful use of structure and poetic devices. This particular poem is made up of two quatrains and two tercets, of which often provide the conclusion of the argument developed in the quatrain. Each line contains eleven syllables making this sonnet hendecasyllable which is Italian in origin and was widely used in the early modern period. Like most sonnets in the Romance language, Garcilaso’s sonnet is Petrarchan in form.…
- 1341 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays -
Romantic Literature is characterized by a propensity for nature, imagination, and intuition. It discards the importance of reason and conventions of society.…
- 1682 Words
- 7 Pages
Good Essays -
The era of Romanticism spans from the late 1700's to the mid 1800's following the French Revolution; therefore, "Romanticism" encompasses characteristics of the human mind in addition to the particular time in history when these qualities became dominant in culture. Romanticism depicts an artistic movement which emerged from reaction against dominant attitudes and approaches of the 18th century. Romanticism established realism in literature through creativity, innovation, exploration, and vivid imagery. By expanding beyond the definition of love, Romanticism, accented by mystery, delves into the strange and fantastic aspects of human experiences. "To escape from society, the Romantics turned their interests to remote and faraway places; the medieval past; folklore and legends, and nature and the common man." Edgar Allen Poe is noted as one of the few American "Romantic" poets. Poe's poem "The Raven" portrays Romanticism as characterized by emotion, exotica, and imagination.…
- 508 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Many poems, written before the 1900’s, express the emotion of love. Each poem explores the meaning in a different way and in different forms. In this essay I will be investigating three different poems/sonnets; La Belle Dame Sans Merci written by John Keats, Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning and last but not least Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. All of these have very different aspects and views, this is what makes them so interesting to compare because of the wide contrast involving the three poems.…
- 2818 Words
- 12 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Nature, Passion, and Religion are three themes that typify romanticism in a profound sense. In his book ‘Romanticism: Keywords,' Fred Burwick discussed those three words and gave some examples on how they typify romanticism. Firstly, when Burwick started talking about nature in his text, he began by explaining that the concept of nature went through a drastic change through time. Then, Burwick moved on to show us some examples of authors who recognized nature, including William Wordsworth and made a point to inform us that in the romantic period authors emphasized a lot on nature, gave it importance and recognized that some people were violating and polluting nature. In William Wordsworth’s poem, ‘Tintern Abbey,’…
- 402 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
When first hearing about the romantics I thought that there was going to be a lot of lovey dovey stuff but I was way off on my thinking. One of the major authors that we talked about was Edgar Allan Poe. He is a prime example of the romantics not being all lovey dovey. When reading Poe’s poems and short stories I got the feeling that it was dark and sad. Poe wrote about a lot of death and dark things. I think that this comes from his rough childhood and all the deaths that he faced so early in his life. Hawthorne is another example of the romantics not being lovey dovey. Hawthorne wrote the Scarlet Letter which is has its dark sides in it. One of the main things in the Scarlet Letter is adultery. This is a dark thing…
- 379 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Romanticism was the rebellion against the neo-classicist Enlightenment period, a response to the social, economic, theological paradigms. Logic and reason were superseded by sensation; social conformity was rejected for freedom of independence. A value was placed on imagination, nature and the individual for their abilities to bring about moral…
- 287 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Romantic art was expressed by individualism, irrationalism, creativity, emotions and nature. During this time, emotion was considered more important over reason along with the senses over intellect. Since artists during this period were in revolt against the orders, they favored the revival of potentially unlimited number of styles, which pretty much can be considered as anything that they liked or anything that pleased them. This artistic concept, which emerged as individual experience, showed specific love of exotic or foreign subjects, bright colors, and a dramatic use of light and line. Romantic artists often explore themes of passion, imagination, and the subconscious.…
- 712 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
First coined in 1798 by Schlegel, Romanticism described an overt reaction against the Enlightenment and classical culture of the eighteenth century. Europe’s Classical past and the values it had attained were disintegrating. The paintings in this era showed the emotional attachment to victims of society. A lot of the work also always pitted the human against nature. The Romantics were devoted to seeing the beauty in nature through their own experiences.…
- 454 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. It stressed strong emotion which now might include trepidation, awe and horror as esthetic experiencesthe individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom within or even from classical notions of form in art, and overturning of previous social conventions, particularly the position of the aristocracy. There was a strong element of historical and natural inevitability in its ideas, stressing the importance of "nature" in art and language. Romanticism is also noted for its elevation of the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individuals and artists. It followed the Enlightenment period and was in part inspired by a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms from the previous period, as well as seeing itself as the fulfillment of the promise of that age. Romanticism cannot be identified with a single style, technique, or attitude, but Romantic painting is generally characterized by a highly imaginative and subjective approach, emotional intensity, and a dream-like or visionary quality (Romanticism art, 2005).…
- 373 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
The growing industrialization and urbanization, which took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, brought forth a peculiar response from the artists and poets of that era. This response got the name of such cultural trend as Romanticism. When one hears the term “romanticism”, one is quick to jump to the conclusion that the work has a relation to love. This may not be wrong but the in the historical context, romanticism is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world (Chantler and Higgins). From this we see that the romantic era was brought by the need of romantics to change their environment to that which suited them. The fear of being transformed by industrialization and machines caused authors to return to their roots of humanity, which of course was nature. For Romantic poets and authors, the meaning of the word nature was very different from how we see the word today. Nowadays the word nature is primarily used in a narrower meaning as scenery and is usually opposed to man. The concept of nature, underlying the philosophy of romanticism, gave it quite a different meaning .They spiritualize the Nature giving it both functions of a living being and of divine creature. They wanted to use this era as way of coming from their oppressed being to that of which frees them to be able to express their thoughts and emotions as they saw fit.…
- 1275 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
The Romantics chose to cling on to people's humanity in the midst of an age where the systems were harsh and repressive. The Romantic Period was wrought with the pervasive turbulence of the revolutions proliferating during those times. As revolutions became rampant in the society, we see a different trend in the field of Literature. The Romantics used words as powerful weapons to channel their thoughts and to express their opinions without coercion and violence. The faith of Romanticism was the belief in the power of people's opinions. Romanticism believes in humanity. Individualism was highly given importance, for the potentialities and power of divergent opinions were greatly valued by both philosophers and poets. At a time when everything began changing in a pugnacious fashion, the Romantics made their advance in a radically nonconforming manner. Where brute force seemed to be the approach warring nations used to achieve their feats, the Romantics on the other hand considered a different method. Using their pens and brilliant minds, they appealed on human emotions to create a new domain that soon overshadowed all forms of writing in the few decades that it lasted for.…
- 595 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays